31-Year-Old Nurse Denies Murdering 8 Babies And Attempting To Kill 10 Others

In connection with the killings of eight babies and attempted murder of 10 others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016, a 31-year-old nurse has pleaded not guilty.

Lucy Letby virtually appeared at Manchester Crown Court, England Monday where she repeated "not guilty" to all 18 charges against her, reported BBC.

While working at the neonatal unit of the hospital, where she was once the face of a campaign, she allegedly killed three girls and five boys, and also tried to murder five girls and five boys.

She was arrested in 2018 after a spike in the number of deaths at her neonatal unit, then she was rearrested over the same alleged offences the following year and again in 2020. After her rearrest in 2019, Detective Inspector Paul Hughes, who is in charge of the case, said that "in July 2018, a healthcare professional was held on suspicion of murder" in connection to the deaths of eight babies and the attempted murder of six others, Sky News. Back then she was subsequently bailed. Hughes, who called the investigation "extremely challenging," shared that they had rearrested her on similar charges.

After her rearrest last year, Hughes said that it has been more than three years since an investigation was first launched into a number of deaths of babies at the neonatal unit at the hospital. He added, "In that time a dedicated team of detectives have been working extremely hard on this highly complex and very sensitive case doing everything they can as quickly as they can to identify what has led to these baby deaths and collapses."

The hospital raised concerns at the high number of deaths of babies between March 2015 and July 2016 after which cops intervened. When medical professionals found premature babies had died after lung and heart failure, and were unusually not possible to resuscitate, an internal inquiry was launched.

At an earlier hearing, a judge said that 2022 would be a realistic starting time for her trial "of this magnitude and complexity." A provisional date for the trial had originally been set as Jan. 11, 2022, but that was abandoned due to the volume of work required by lawyers from both the parties. Letby is scheduled to go on trial in October next year, according to Daily Mail.